Good Mood: The New Psychology
of Overcoming Depression

The learning gained in psychoanalysis may come from dredging up forgotten or repressed memories of childhood events. This can be a sudden illumination induced by free association or related techniques. Or the learning may come from creating a new set of experiences to offset the old ones, for example, learning that one can trust a therapist and other people after coming to believe as a child that all other persons are untrustworthy, or that one is helpless to deal successfully with other people. This learning is closely related to the more recently-developed method of Interpersonal Therapy, which has had considerable success in helping depressed people. And if the focus is on learning that one is capable of dealing with other people rather than being helpless, the learning is related to Seligman's approach to depression, discussed in Chapter 17. Once more, different therapeutic strokes help different folks, but all of these approaches fit nicely into the general intellectual framework of Self-comparisons Analysis.

Psychoanalysis intends that a patient identify, relive, and understand childhood experiences--either traumatic experiences such as losing a parent, or repeated experiences such as being criticized for not doing better in school. The aim is that the person learn that the childhood experiences were not what they are subconsciously remembered to be--that all relationships need not be the same as the person's relationships with his or her parents, and that as an adult the person need not be obedient to the dictates of his or her parents in the past. That is, like behavior-modification and cognitive therapies, psychoanalysis is supposed to be a special process of learning (and unlearning) with respect to negative self-comparisons.

With respect to traumatic childhood experiences, the person can learn to recognize the continuing influence of the childhood event, to understand its impact, and perhaps to lessen its tension by reliving it in a context where it no longer is so terrible. For example, Joan H., a woman of thirty-five who relived in therapy the death of her mother when she was seven, came to understand that the deprivation she felt at seven no longer applies at thirty-five. That is, the difference between being a woman of 35 without a mother versus being a woman of 35 with a mother is much less important than the difference between having a mother versus not having a mother at age seven. If Joan recognizes that the traumatic loss -- a huge negative self- comparison-- that she experienced at seven (and still remembers vividly) no longer applies, then she can feel less sad.

Another aspect of re-living traumatic experiences is that a person can finally get the facts straight, and hence get rid of damaging misconceptions. For example, many children whose parents [or siblings] die in childhood actually feel responsible for the event, believing that the death happened through the child's neglect or misbehavior. Joan was such a person. As an adult, she can finally realize that her mother's heart attack did not occur because Joan was being too noisy, and hence she can now shed that horrible guilty self-comparison, and with it the attendant sadness. This is really an improvement in one's numerator, the perceived facts of one's life, but I've mentioned it here for convenience.

With respect, now, to non-traumatic childhood experiences: understanding one's history can also have beneficial effects in reducing negative self-comparisons, as illustrated by the story about my mother and me just above. Knowledge of one's history also can help you understand why your inner logic leads you to choose being depressed, if this is your pattern. This observation may convince you that the benefits of self-pity in depression may not be worth the pain. Being obviously depressed may be effective for a child by inducing others to show pity and love. But exhibitions of depression by adults tend to turn away other people. The people most needing love are usually the least lovable, someone once said.

So, a device that was successful for the child, and therefore made into a habit, may be counter-productive as an adult. If the adult recognizes this change in circumstances, and correctly evaluates the cost/benefit ratio of adult depression, the adult may quit the habit. Of course the direct pleasures of self-pity may continue to outweigh the pains of depression, in which case the depression will continue to be relatively attractive. But with the recognition that depression is not a profitable tactic outwardly, the balance may tip away from choosing to be depressed.

It may also be helpful to understand destructive patterns of interpersonal relationships learned in childhood. For example, my difficulty in dealing with bosses stems from my childhood relationship with my father. I concluded that he did not have my interests at heart but rather only his own. I never felt he could be believed, or relied upon to deal honestly with me. Psychoanalysts believe that, without psychoanalytic reliving of the event it would be a waste of time in a case like mine to try to build a habit of dealing confidently with a boss. They believe that unless one goes back to the original problem, cleans out the Stygian stables and builds a new solid groundwork, one cannot have a psychologically-safe future. In this case a psychoanalyst would attempt to show me, by laboriously building a trustworthy relationship with me--that is, by laying a new groundwork of interpersonal experience--that all relationships need not be like the relationship I had with my father. In this way, the psychoanalytic therapy might improve my numerator, that is, my view of my possibilities.

top | continued

home | about simon | table of contents | ways to overcome depression
conquering depression | download book | buy complete book